The annual World ATM Congress (WAC) event plays host to product demonstrations and launches, contract closures and networking opportunities, together with a busy schedule of conferences and high-level meetings. This year, a total of 225 exhibiting companies and 7,500 delegates from 130 countries took part. Every year, the World ATM Congress brings together around a hundred air navigation service providers (ANSPs), product developers, leaders and experts in the aviation industry, government representatives, manufacturers and industry suppliers from around the world.

Organised by the Civil Air Navigation Services Organisation (CANSO) –of which Enaire (formerly Aena) is a founding member and which brings together air navigation service providers from around the world– in partnership with the Air Traffic Control Association (ATCA), an association that represents the air traffic control sector, the World Air Traffic Management Congress is an indispensable event that Ineco has been attending for almost 20 years.

The Galileo system: the brightest star

Galileo is the flagship project of European satellite navigation: a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) that will boast a total of 30 satellites by 2020 –26 of which are already in orbit– managed by the European Global Navigation Satellite Systems Agency (GSA). Galileo is compatible and interoperable with systems such as the US’s GPS and Russia’s GLONASS, and will offer an unprecedented improvement in performance in terms of precision, resilience and robustness.

In 2016, the GSA entrusted its operation and maintenance to a consortium led by Spaceopal for the following 10 years. Spain is part of this consortium, through a group of public enterprises led by Ineco, in partnership with Isdefe and INTA (National Institute of Aerospace Technology). Ineco is in charge of the operation, top level maintenance and management of the hosting services of the European GNSS Service Centre (GSC) located at the INTA’s facilities in Torrejón de Ardoz (Madrid).

Orderly skies

With a marked international orientation, the air navigation sector moves in a world of extreme safety requirements and resulting advances in new equipment and technologies to ensure this safety.

Since 2007, Ineco has been part of the Single European Sky ATM Research (SESAR) project, which is currently in the deployment phase of unifying space and air traffic control in Europe. In this respect, WAC 2019 played host to SESAR guided walking tours which saw the involvement of Ineco’s aviation experts Pilar Calzón, Víctor Gordo, Fernando Ruiz-Artaza, José Manuel Rísquez, Mercedes López and José Recio. There were also presentations on the integration of small drones and their application in airports and CTR environments by Víctor Gordo, and on the HEDIPRO flight procedure design tool by the engineers Javier Espinosa Aranda and Fernando Carrillo, also from Ineco.

The company has extensive experience in calculating and designing aeronautical charts for the publication of procedures based on PBN, GNSS, GBAS and vertical guidance approaches (APV SBAS), airspace restructuring –such as the restructuring carried out at Spanish airports and in countries of the likes of Egypt and Morocco– and navigation easement studies. Designs of instrumental flight procedures for the international market are also carried out, such as those implemented for the airports of the Sultanate of Oman, Cape Verde and Singapore Changi Airport.

In addition, in partnership with ENAIRE (formerly Aena), Ineco has carried out more than 2,000 radio simulations to assess the impact on airport CNS systems of infrastructures close to airports, such as shopping centres and housing developments, and within the airports themselves, for instance, new terminal buildings and runway extensions. To achieve this, the company uses its own NAVTOOLS proprietary software.

RPAS: all of the guarantees for drone flights

Ineco’s RPAS radio navigation aid verification project, which was presented during WAC 19, is an innovative solution for in-flight recording of radio navigation aid signals and a console on the ground that makes it possible to determine the trajectory flown and quality of guidance provided by the radio navigation aid.

The company is certified to operate and owns a light commercial drone for inspection of bridges and viaducts, and has also acquired a drone with greater capabilities and autonomy able to carry payloads of up to 4 kg, enabling more complex operations to be carried out.

From SACTA to iTEC

In terms of automated air traffic control systems, Ineco has historically worked in collaboration with Enaire and other industry partners on the evolution and development of its control system, known as SACTA, which
was designed entirely by Spanish companies and is a benchmark at the European and global levels. The SACTA and ICARO systems and the ACC voice communication system (COMETA) provide all aeronautical information necessary for air traffic control in Spain and are constantly updated.

The company is currently collaborating with Enaire on the development of a future automated air traffic control system (iTEC). Ineco is also working on another fundamental element for air navigation safety: guaranteeing the quality of the aviation data that ENAIRE collects, publishes and supplies.

When the Galileo satellite radio navigation and positioning system is fully operational, with its 30 satellites deployed, it will be possible to determine the location of people and objects with a precision and speed that are currently unattainable. In addition, it will provide Europe with a navigation system that is independent from the existing satellite positioning systems such as the North American GPS which operates using 31 satellites and Russia’s GLONASS, which uses 24 satellites.

The North American and Russian systems, along with the Chinese BDS, operate under military control, making Galileo the only one designed for civilian purposes and completely open to commercial use. It will also provide Europeans with independence from the Russian and American systems, which is of strategic importance, taking into account that, if they were to be blocked, up to 10% of the European economic activity depends to a greater or lesser extent on satellite navigation.

The importance of these systems in the world economy and transport is growing, along with the range of uses. It is for this reason that, after more than ten years of work, the European space industry and institutions have been able to conduct a project to deliver the highly competitive performance that will finally give Europe its desired technological and strategic independence. It will also allow access to a market with great potential for growth. See https://www.gsc-europa.eu/.

Galileo will provide signals for positioning, navigation and time measurement that are much more accurate than the other systems

When it is fully operational, Galileo, which was developed by the EU with the assistance of the European Space Agency (ESA) and whose services are operated by the European Global Satellite Agency (GSA), will provide signals for positioning, navigation and time measurement with much greater accuracy than the other systems, free of charge, for an unlimited number of users, and with the guarantee that the signals will be available anywhere in the world. It will be interoperable with the GPS system and will offer a paid commercial service that provides high precision and authentication.

Moreover, Galileo will offer a two other services: the PRS (Public Regulated Service) service which has highly robust signals that protect against malicious interference and which is intended for government use by security and civil protection organisations; and support for the SAR service (search and rescue), a European contribution to the international rescue service COSPAS-SARSAT. One of the biggest innovations is the incorporation of a return channel that informs those seeking assistance that their message has been received and that help is on the way. In addition, the Galileo technology makes it possible to reduce the search radius, and with it, the rescue time, which is a critical factor in saving lives on these missions.

According to the European Global Satellite Agency (GSA), the market for applications based on satellite navigation systems will grow 11% per year in Europe over the next few years, reaching 165 billion Euros in 2020, just for activities directly related to the system (chips, maps or services), without taking into account the activities facilitated by this technology, such as mobile phones with satellite navigation capabilities (GNSS). Galileo will be key to the introduction of this technology to the market, to complement the GPS system.

Galileo, in conjunction with GPS, will open a new era of satellite navigation through the introduction of the ‘multi-constellation’ concept. In the case of rail transport, aviation or road, this combined use will be very useful for fleet management, pinpointing the location of vehicles or vessels in real time, even in remote locations or in areas with poor visibility.

Satellite navigation is also an essential tool for scientists, astronomers, geologists and biologists who follow the movements of planets, the Earth and wildlife. For example, this type of positioning and location system allows animal tracking or drone monitoring. In addition, its time measurement, which is accurate to one billionth of a second, allows all kinds of measurements and scientific experiments to be performed with great accuracy.

1.5 BILLION FOR SATELLITE MANAGEMENT

In December 2016, the GSA, the organization responsible for operation of the Galileo system, awarded the contract for its operation and maintenance for the next 10 years to Spaceopal, a company formed by the Italian company Telespazio and the German company DLR GfR, which already managed the Galileo Control Centres (GCC) in Italy and Germany, respectively. Spaceopal’s industrial team includes the participation of a Spanish group led by Ineco with the collaboration of INTA and Isdefe.

The contract, valued at 1.5 billion Euros, includes the operation and maintenance of the Galileo system:

• Operation of the Galileo satellites from the two main control centres located in Germany and Italy.
• Service and information to the users, as well as activities for the evolution of services and applications from the GSC centre, located in Madrid, for the data distribution network of Galileo.
• Logistics and maintenance of the system.
• Management of minor developments and support for major developments of the system.

Named after the Genius

The astronomer, physicist and mathematician Galileo Galilei, born in Pisa (Italy) in 1564, would certainly appreciate the progress of a project like the one that bears his name. He was found guilty by the Inquisition for maintaining, among other theories, that the Sun was the centre of the solar system and the Earth rotated on its own axis. Although there is no historical record, he is credited with the famous sentence spoken before the court: Epur si muove. Although he officially recanted his scientific assertions, thanks to which his prison sentence was commuted to lifelong house arrest, he continued researching them until his death in 1642, the same year in which Isaac Newton was born. The image shows, Galileo teaching the Doge of Venice how to use a telescope. Fresco de Giuseppe Bertini (1825-1898).

ENAIRE’s automatic air traffic control system (SACTA for its acronym in Spanish), is a complex system of local machines and servers, installed in control centres and towers, that share information in real time. SACTA makes it possible to automate the acquisition, processing, distribution and presentation of the data required to carry out air traffic control tasks that form part of the air traffic management (ATM) system. The main objective of ATM is to regulate traffic in a secure and orderly fashion, as well as to ensure that air navigation system capacity can meet the demand. SACTA began providing service in 1990 at Palma de Mallorca’s control centre; nowadays it is the only traffic control system in all of Spain’s airports.

This system carries out the integration, automation and improvement of processes which allow for the control of aircraft that are en route, approaching and near the tower. In this way, information can be coherently processed and the associated air traffic control and management services have the support they need to meet security and service objectives. It is an ever-evolving system, meaning that ENAIRE is constantly perfecting and modernising it.

Ineco has collaborated with ENAIRE since 1998 on the evolution of SACTA, as well as on the automatic system for flight plan, aeronautical and meteorological information (ICARO), by participating in the specifications, design, testing and commissioning of new functionalities. Ineco’s experts are part of system evolution and development in almost all areas, from the design of both functional and hardware architecture requirements, to maintenance and assistance to different ENAIRE users. A broad range of ATM system knowledge is obtained this way, proving extremely useful to the company and facilitating its national and international expansion.

Broadly speaking, the SACTA system makes it possible:

• To provide the controller with all relevant, updated air traffic data, thus facilitating interoperability between control facilities, collateral installations in Spain and abroad, and the CFMU.
• For controllers and technicians to receive training in a dynamic simulation environment.

A modular, redundant design was chosen to deal with such a complex system, thus allowing it to evolve with the least possible disruption to the operation.

Information that is always available to air traffic

The SACTA system, via its subsystems, integrates and provides the following information which is available to air traffic controller at all times:

• Flight plan information: the system is in charge of processing the flight plans received, determining routes and flight profiles. It also guarantees the interoperability of control facilities and foreign agents, making them fully compatible with flight plans that have origins and/or destinations beyond Spain’s borders.
• Flight monitoring: the system makes it possible to identify and obtain the position and information regarding aircraft trajectories in controlled airspace, as well as the capacity to ensure the separation and controlled flow of flights. This information is obtained by integrating data from the radar and sensor network for position within national territory, with the data provided by each aircraft in real time.
• Aeronautical and meteorological information: the system receives and processes meteorological and aeronautical messages (such as SMI, QNH and NOTAM).
• Supervision: the purpose of the system is to monitor, control and configure the HW/SW subsystems, which make up the SACTA system, thus promoting its reliability and integrity.
• Recording and operations: these allow for the analysis and study of operational and technical information.

SACTA SCREEN. The SACTA system determines routes and flight profiles, identifies the position of aircraft and ensures their separation in airspace.

New functionalities

Greater capacity, precision, savings and efficiency

The main purpose of SACTA, as an ATM system in service, is traffic security in all airspace sectors, thus the reason why it is constantly evolving. The automation of processes which are increasingly complex due to the high concentration of flights in European skies is organised, developed and tested alongside ATC personnel. This makes the information received by air traffic controllers through their HMI (Human Machine Interface) accurate and relevant, thus improving and strengthening communication flows with aircraft and different subsystems. The latest SACTA development included a series of functionalities which noticeably improve efficiency in route control, TMA and TWR. Below are the details concerning the most important changes currently being implemented:

• Paperless Operations (OSF for its acronym in Spanish).The flight progress strip is a fundamental tool for air traffic controllers. This little slip of paper contains the essential information about the route or itinerary for each controlled flight. With the use of ‘paperless operations’, aerodrome control management is possible with electronic flight strips. These strips appear on the screen in the same order as the old strips which were organised in bays. This system did not simply replace paper, but it had to be adapted to the different roles performed by tower controllers. Management of traffic in the tower is divided into three different areas of responsibility: Clearance (ATC authorisation and start-up), taxi track (taxi clearance) and Local control (clearance for takeoff and landing); these areas of responsibility can be assigned individually, or several can be integrated into a control position. Accordingly, for each case the electronic flight strip presented will follow its functional cycle in line with the areas of responsibility assigned to each control position. Implementation of paperless operations (OSF), presently at Palma de Mallorca and Malaga airports, immediately resulted in increased efficiency and capacity.
• Air Ground DataLink (AGDL). AGDL implements land-air point-to-point digital communication, allowing for the exchange of information between the aircraft and the Control Centre regarding two different technologies: ATN and FANS. Among other amenities, it provides ADS-C and CPDLC services. Implementation of ADS-C (Automatic Dependent Surveillance–Contract), only in the FANS network, represents significant progress in surveillance. It generates periodic reports or variables on request such as aircraft position and speed, using available aviation information as the source, including GPS data. CPDLC technology (Controller-Pilot Data Link Communication) consists in exchanging a series of pre-defined text messages based on a common phraseology between the air traffic controller and the pilot. This technology makes it possible, among other benefits, to accelerate operating instructions and prevent confusion caused by voice dialogues, thus a complementary tool to this technology.
• Collaborative Decision Making (CDM). The CDM project is an operational efficiency improvement tool whose approach is the process of aircraft rotation, based on the philosophy of sharing information that affects flights, among the different actors involved (handling, control, airlines and airport). This information is processed, thus increasing its accuracy and completeness. Reduced wait times and increased efficiency are achieved with this tool. The CDM process involves adapting the procedures that the airport operates with.
• Arrival Manager (AMAN). The Arrival Manager implements calculation of the optimal airport arrival sequence by utilising efficiency criteria to reduce wait times, thus facilitating flight transfer between APP and TWR.
• eCOS/eVEREST. Although it is almost at the end of the list, it represents the most important change in the evolution of system hardware and software in recent years. It involves a redistribution of the system’s core information nodes, thus affecting the overall architecture of the system. It goes from a configuration where the Seville and Palma servers are integrated, in a centralised manner, in Madrid and Barcelona respectively, together with their affected TWR facilities. The impact on the distribution of flight plan, radar, aeronautical and meteorological information is global, but the costs for implementation, commissioning, maintenance and development are reduced. Although it is a big change to the infrastructure, it is not a big change for normal control operations, meaning that it is transparent.
• Phase 2 Configuration (CF2 for its acronym in Spanish). CF2 affords easier operations, based on the aircraft tag that the air traffic controller sees on the screen. This tag displays colour changes or blinking on a global level or in certain fields, some of which are new, depending on the status of the flight plan, transfers between sectors, restrictions and alerts.

The main purpose of SACTA, as an ATM system in service, is to provide the tools which make it possible to guarantee the separation of traffic in all airspace sector. / PHOTO_PABLO NEUSTADT

The growth projection by 2020 is almost 40ZB (zettabyte, 10²¹ bytes), the majority generated by human beings, followed by physical devices connected to the Internet. Another indicator that allows us to verify this trend is that the Big Data analytics and technology market grows at an annual rate of 20-30%, with an estimated world market of 50 billion euros by 2018.

But it is not simply the amount of data that makes the concept of Big Data unique. We tend to take this concept literally and associate it with a large amount of information, but, as we will see later on, a set of data must have more qualities in order to be considered Big Data.

DEFINITION OF BIG DATA AND ASSOCIATED PROBLEMS

We can talk about Big Data when large amounts of information are generated (Volume) very quickly (Velocity), with heterogeneous types of data (Variety). Recently, the industry has started to add a fourth ‘V’ to these three classic features (the three V’s): Veracity. Given that a large portion of information is directly generated by people, it is necessary that the origin of the data be granted the quality of veracity. There is no point in having a full set of data that is not reliable.

To a great extent, the rise in Big Data technologies has been caused by the social networks, as far as the volume and variety of data are concerned, and by the marketing sector, with regard to the possibilities of demonstrating the value of all the information being generated. Banking is another classic sector that generates and exploits Big Data. The study of the information on uses and habits that can be obtained from banking information makes it possible to design products tailored to customers, or to predict behaviours, such as outstanding payments, according to the correlation of the information available. Engineering firms are also beginning to identify cases of use for which the capacity of Big Data analytics is a competitive advantage.

Finally, the field of the IoT (Internet of Things) and Smart Cities should be noted.
The concept of a Smart City involves an intensive use of information technologies for collecting and processing the information that the city generates using the sensors deployed or other data sources, such as traffic cameras or any other source of unstructured information.

The four qualities that information must have in order to identify with
the concept of big data are: volume, velocity, variety and veracity

THE INDUSTRY’S APPROACH

Big Data projects cannot be efficiently addressed using traditional technologies. The requirements for storing and exploiting such quantities of data, with their qualities of velocity and heterogeneity, have forced the industry to design new technologies that make it possible to work with information in real time, including the previously mentioned characteristics of data volume and variety.

Among the different paradigms presented by the industry when tackling Big Data projects, we can highlight In-Memory (IMDB) technologies and Distributed Systems. In-Memory technology allows all of the information that is necessary to work to be loaded into a memory where the processing is much faster. Furthermore, solutions based on distributed systems are oriented towards parallel processing, allowing a complex problem to be broken down and sorted out by using different machines responsible for solving each part of the original problem. This breakdown allows for the use of affordable computers which together make up a large processing platform. The appearance of Open Source solutions such as Hadoop and Storm has supported this trend.

Additionally, there is a tendency to implement Big Data platforms using cloud services. The problem raised in Big Data projects is infrastructure dimensioning and scalability (growth potential). For this reason, these sorts of projects need to have an infrastructure that is elastic and which allows available resources to be expanded or reduced depending on our requirements at any given moment.

Solutions based on cloud services are going to take the place of private infrastructure contracting (on-premise), as this allows companies to be free from infrastructure installation and maintenance, in order to focus on tasks which contribute value to the project. We are no longer talking about acquiring machines (virtual or physical) where we have installed and configured our own solution, but rather about utilising the services we need at any given time, paying only for the processing time and the storage. For instance, if we need an automatic learning service where we can define a prediction algorithm that works with our own information, contracting the cloud service and only paying for the period of use is sufficient.

WHAT BIG DATA IS HIDING

Once we have this vast amount of data, how do we generate value from our information? There is a misconception that Big Data projects involve storing the existing information and applying a relatively complex technology to analyse what we can obtain. A Big Data project should begin prior to starting to compile information. It is necessary to be sure about the objectives that motivate the project and the type of information we need, as well as to consider all of the constraints involved in the collection and processing of this information.

As opposed to Big Data technology, classic Business Intelligence systems are based on the consolidation of the information which lets us carry out operations with that pre-calculated data. The new Big Data paradigm forces us, on one hand, to be able to analyse the flow of information in real time, and, on the other, to store the raw information. With regard to temperature sensors, for example, we need to record all measurements that the sensor has generated. It is not enough to simply control the average daily temperature, since having the additional information does not allow us to analyse details to be able to predict parameter behaviour or identify behaviour patterns. That is to say that we need to be able to store and analyse the information in its original form, or at a much lower level of detail than in traditional analytical systems.

BIG DATA IN ENGINEERING

The areas of application are far-reaching, ranging from solutions for Smart Cities to automatic learning techniques for predictive maintenance activities. At Ineco we are aware of the importance and the possibilities Big Data technologies have in the field of engineering. Therefore, the Information Technologies division studies and exploits the characteristics of Big Data in different areas. In terms of Smart Cities we work in different fields, among which we can highlight the Smart CityNECO platform, for the integration of information from the various city services (mobility, environment, etc.) allowing for a correct management based on the control panels of the different services provided by the city. In addition, also within the field of Smart Cities, but more specifically concerning the axis of mobility (Smart Mobility), Ineco works in the study and optimisation of mobility in cities by creating prediction and simulation environments in real time that allow the optimal mobility regulation parameters in the different areas of the city to be determined. This solution is based on integrating the simulation models, as well as on the automatic learning techniques, by working with the information concerning the city’s state of mobility in real time.

A big data project must be sure about the objectives and the type of information we need, as well as consider the constraints involved in the collection and processing of this information

Within the field of infrastructure maintenance, predictive maintenance is based on anticipating the problem before it becomes a reality, or before its state loses the optimal conditions. This way, we lengthen the time between maintenance activities, thus improving availability while saving on costs. In this field, we develop predictive techniques using measurements from different parameters thanks to sensors which allow a relationship with their service life to be established. The difference with traditional techniques lies in automatically combining all information regarding their state, characteristics, exploitation and environmental conditions.

Within the area of mobility surveys and capacity, Ineco works on a mobile device survey platform that allows all information relevant to these types of studies to be compiled, including the responses provided by the user, location information provided by the GPS, etc. Additionally, with regard to the answers given using natural speech, we can conduct what is called a ‘Sentiment Analysis’ (opinion mining) which lets us identify the speaker’s attitude towards an issue.

Furthermore, we cannot forget that Big Data does not only consider alphanumeric information. Thus, another area of research focuses on image processing. The objective is to locate defects or objects in an automated way.

To sum up, we are undergoing a digital transformation which, combined with interconnection capacities, is exponentially increasing the amount of information generated. We live in the ‘Time of Data’ and the capacity to analyse that information is going to mark the difference in all fields of business.